I agree with you about habits - people are creatures of habit, and at times I have found myself logging in and just jumping squares instead of actually doing something with my spare time. I don't do that anymore, but I still play - I just make sure I log off when I'm bored/not doing anything.

So, I don't get this.
If you didn't have to get gear each season/tier, what exactly do you do in-game in terms of progression? Just curious what idea(s) you have that would replace the current progress cycle, which is obviously a core part of MMO/RPG play.

Making all extra paid services and expansions free is frankly a terrible idea, business-wise.

He is speaking from a pvp perspective just because you have the best gear in pvp doesn't mean you'll get gladiator. That takes a ton of experience and networking which is already a grind for someone just starting. The gear grind isn't necessary for people who just want to push rating. I mean they're several rank 1 player's that bot to get gear because random battlegrounds are worse then lfr. You can't carry them because a freshly geared 90's damage is just awful and people don't want to follow objectives or listen.. then there is the chance that you can spam queue into premades and honor is non-exist on a lose. Its actually pretty close to hell sometimes. Gearing up my rogue was a nightmare and I have a ton of utility. Smoke bomb, mortal strike debuff, tricks of the trade, and prey on the weak but none of it mattered because I did no damage and nobody wanted to kill the efc.

No new content available - done everything I wanted / was aiming for. Oh wait that's what's happening right now !!
Aaaaand that's also why I'm not subscribed any more, will be when WoD comes though...since you know : new content

As for something that would make me think "damn I'll never play this game ever again" I really have no idea, I'm pretty open minded as long as things keep me entertaining. The biggest deal breaker would just be me losing interest.

for me it was when they decided that my playstyle wasn't one they wanted to support. I was happy being overly casual. playing every class with a plan to do so in each faction. I'd be perfectly content in welfare epics as I had been for expansions past. they took away welfare epics for the most part. running all my toons through all of the leveling content to get lfr ready just became too time intensive and it was frustrating that it felt like artificial slowing of progression, only being able to make a slight bit of progress a day requiring many same old boring days to achieve something.

I used to want to just get my toons leveled and geared comfortably enough to not hassle over lowly world mobs and then probably start some leveling guilds and help other players. I guess they thought that it was more important to keep all the players who complained of boredom with something to do by slowing the rate at which they could progress than it was to allow this casual to just be happy to play casually with no intention of leaving because I could always find something to do or wait patiently for something new to come along.

I think the guy who said wow will die a death of a thousand cuts was right on and that that's what has been happening for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised to see blizzard lose players just in the short period of time prior to allowing flight again come this new expansion. they push the envelope and every time they do they push some players on the game board.

I forgot. since I tended to hate being forced to interact with the terrible people wow players could sometimes be, and used the nice open playerless world to come down from bad experiences, when they started merging servers was one of the last straws for me. increasing the players fighting over resources I also saw as another attempt to slow player progression.

not sure anyone has read to this point but other things that really got to be and just helped build resentment towards the way things were going was gold expenditure. sure you could fairly easily have the gold to afford to pay for flying again when you hit level cap but it felt like such a rip after all you've already payed to be able to fly to have to continue to sink money into it. and the more toons you play the more you've spent obviously. it really ticked me off that after the redo of the old world all of the creatures there up to 60 had a chance to drop grey items worth mere copper. you may find it funny that this bugs me but I really liked leveling new toons but when they would fill up there bags with now literally useless garbage rather than something with a reasonable resale value of sat least silver pieces it felt like another slap to the face.

I get your point and I understand your point but looking at the top level of raiding, this still stands as you can spend real $$ for in game gold (not by blizzard ofc) and use it to buy heroic ilvl gear.

Not confused but thanks for your concern.

By this logic paying a guild to boost you through heroic raid so you can get your BIS is also pay to win.

Use your confusing logic, but for me both parts of the transaction need to be facilitated by blizzard to make this a pay2win issue.